Thursday, December 17, 2009

Politics and Health Care

On our last national poll Democrats led 62-20 on the generic ballot when you combined Democratic and independent voters. I'm working with that metric on the assumption that the Republicans are gone already.

Of the folks in that group planning to vote Republican next year 86% said they were opposed to Barack Obama's health care plan, and within that group 87% said the reason for their opposition was that it created too much government involvement in health care.

It looks like those folks are going to end up getting their way to some extent now, but it's going to be real interesting to see if that actually brings them back into the Democratic fold, or if they were just going to vote Republican no matter what next year and certain folks in the Democratic caucus diluted the health care bill to save the favor of some voters who were gone anyway.

My guess is that swath of voters is going to vote Republican next year no matter what the final outcome of the health care bill is, which is another reason why Democratic leaders should be more concerned with keeping the base happy. But that ship may have sailed. Either way we'll be watching over the next few months to see if that 20% of Democrats and independents planning to vote Republican actually declines after they've been acquiesced to on health care.